I am fascinated by song stories...the glimpses of composers' lives that their creations permit us to see, although oftentimes not so readily. Here are my my "scoops", posted here for your enjoyment, and for what I hope will feed our mutual curiosity about His musical purposes for us. Join me in this history adventure, as we find what circumstances coalesced to create the songs we all love! Play detective with me, and tell me what song "scoops" you may know that I don't...yet.

About Me

Saturday, January 30, 2016

This
school teacher was thinking as a missionary. So if one ever pondered what the
fusion of those two vocations would sound like, Priscilla Jane Owens left no
mystery outstanding for this question when she crafted “Jesus Saves” in 1882
while living in Baltimore (see period map from 1852 here). As she sat down in
the Union Square Methodist Church, she wanted this to be a joyful sound, and
indeed she put those very words in the first syllables of the poetry she wrote.
Missionary work is to be exciting, was her bottom line. How did she stamp this
idea on the song? Two words that she exclaimed repeatedly are the recipe she
prescribed.

Perhaps
Priscilla learned her method in “Jesus Saves” as a result of her lengthy career
in children’s education. If you want those you’re cultivating to remember an
idea, it’s best to repeat it, perhaps many times in a small space. That way,
they cannot possibly miss it. This 53-year old teacher had seen her share of
students for many years on both Sundays and the other days of the week, and she
must have shared many songs with them by this time in 1882. Jesus Saves! That
was the message she wanted these students, probably both children and adults
for this occasion, to grasp. The church apparently was anticipating a worship service
that would focus on mission work. Where the mission work was going isn’t explicitly
communicated, but perhaps it was a variety of places, given what she said in
the song’s verses. ‘All around’ and ‘every land’ (v. 1), ‘far and wide’ (v.2),
Priscilla says. He works, no matter where one goes -- a confidence and buoyancy
she and the Union Square church members evidently wanted to accompany whomever
and wherever their church-supported missionary was. Verse three implies they
expected there would be challenges for the mission work, ‘battle strife’ and ‘gloom’
which the messenger would encounter and overcome with the same two words. Perhaps
these people, including Priscilla, were not strangers to difficulties. ‘We don’t
wear rose-colored glasses, but here’s our solution’, they say. Fix your sight
on the completed work of Him – that fact is crucial for everyone. Anyone who’s
bought into Jesus’ accomplishment – really staked his life on it – will be the
most effective missionary.

What
more needs to be said? Priscilla Owens had a mission, to create as much a mood
as anything else. We should be energized
about our leader, and the future He provides. But would it be easier for
hearers to grasp what she’s saying, maybe if they had once been destitute? Possess
nothing, but then discover the gold bullion that makes you a king. Priscilla
marks this gold with something like an X on the treasure map. Question:What do
I in fact have, besides what He’s got waiting for me? Answer: Nothing. Next question:
How does one find the pot of gold? Priscilla might say her two words are your
answer to that one.

See more
information on the song story in these sources: TheComplete Book of
Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J.
Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing
Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1990.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Perhaps his seeing the ocean served as an inspiration after he moved to San
Francisco on the American west coast. And, one could also say he must have been
examining someone else’s travel itinerary in his bible. Those would be two
circumstances that we could reasonably guess were operative in Charles
Hutchinson Gabriel’s mind as he wrote out the words and music for “Send the Light”
in 1890. He was the music director at the church where he’d just arrived, and
there was to be a celebration with music, so naturally Gabriel was called upon
for his talent and insight. A song was the result, one with a certain emphasis,
appropriate for what they were commemorating, and reflective of the energy they
possessed for the song’s message. Accessing Gabriel’s resources is not
difficult over 100 years later, since what he had we can still see.

The 34-year old music minister Charles Gabriel was new to the west coast and
San Francisco where he arrived in 1890, but he’d had plenty of breeding and experience
that prepared him for this point in his life. He was raised in a musical home
in Iowa, where his father guided singing schools, so it was not unexpected that
Charles would become adept on the family’s organ and follow in his father’s singing
footsteps by the time he was 17. “Send the Light” was apparently his first
professional work, thereby inaugurating the career of this prodigy. Grace
Methodist Episcopal Church was evidently engaged in missionary work, so Gabriel
generated the song to underscore the church’s efforts and inspire its members. By
the words he used in its verses, we can deduce that he was reading his bible’s
account of Acts 16:9-12. Was the Grace church, like Paul centuries earlier,
planning a missionary effort across some body of water? One can imagine that
the ‘restless wave’ (v.1) and ‘shore to shore’ (refrain) were facets of their
own time, like those of Macedonia (v. 2) that called out to the apostle during
his second missionary journey 18centuries earlier. On a personal level, Gabriel’s own missionary life as
a hymnist, which was just beginning, was something to highlight too. By the end
of his life, he’d reportedly written some 7,000 to 8,000 songs, gifts and tools
that Christendom at large today can still access to carry on the mission we all
have – drawing attention to the Creator-Sustainer-Redeemer.

Charles Gabriel’s life-story has elements that are useful for reflection by
anyone who wants to do something meaningful for Him. He was obviously nurtured
in a home and community that loved and appreciated him, blessing him with a gift
that he used the remainder of his life. He didn’t remain in Iowa, however, but
allowed that musical aptitude to transport him thousands of miles away. He
later returned to the Midwest, to Chicago as he widened his experience via the
Rodeheaver Publishing Company. He eventually passed into the next life in 1932 while
in Hollywood, California, indicating he’d moved yet again to the west coast, far
from where he’d started 76 years earlier. His Iowa-born skills took him pretty
far, but he must have thought the light he wrote about as a 34-year old was the
ultimate transporter. Where else do you suppose it will take us?

Saturday, January 16, 2016

George
Duffield was still grieving his friend’s untimely demise, and evidently wrote
something that was therapeutic for himself and others a week later. “Stand Up,
Stand Up for Jesus” was actually not his idea, but his dying friend’s, and also
a more ancient author’s whose words he examined in the wake of the tragedy that
took his friend. Death is not a kind visitor, and it must have seemed
especially unwelcome for the Philadelphians who had known the minister whose
life they were remembering that early spring of 1858. How unfair it was, but they
must have reasoned that there was once another unjust casualty, one with an
influence that spanned many more years than their departed friend’s. Even their
friend knew this as he slipped into the next world.

The
40-year old George Duffield and his 33-year old friend Dudley Tyng were fellow
servants of God in the city of brotherly love in the 1850s when the latter was
helping to stimulate a revival there. Tyng was described as a dynamic speaker,
whose message once stirred a crowd of 1,000 men to commit themselves to Christ
the same day. This was just days before an accident and its aftermath that took
the young minister’s life. He’d said giving up his right arm was preferable to curbing
the message that God compelled him to deliver. And, so it was, as a piece of
farm machinery hooked his sleeve and crushed his arm a few weeks later. As he
suffered from the loss of blood and the accompanying shock, Tyng whispered to
his father the words that sparked Duffield’s imagination. ‘Stand up for Jesus’,
Tyng urged, just before he expired a few days hence. Both ministers had
witnessed the results of the church’s work in the city, and must have felt they
were winning the spiritual warfare, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for either
man to have been reading about how to engage the enemy. With Tyng’s dying words,
the apostle’s words (Ephesians 6) that George read a few days after his friend’s
death had magnified meaning and impact. George’s sermon that next Sunday concluded
with the six verses from his heart, as he mused about what had happened the
preceding week, and considered how to move forward. His friend’s voice would
not be stilled, after all, because his was just an echo. And, it was not a
lonely, solo voice, either.

One
could say that Dudley Tyng and George Duffield knew how to fight, though they
were disciples of the Prince of Peace. Perhaps their time had no small
influence on their perspective. Both men were ardent abolitionists, and as the
American Civil War loomed, both knew their stand put them at odds with others,
even in the free northern states. With a heightened awareness of the morals of
slavery and their spiritual calling, how could Dudley and George do anything
else, we might ask. As he eulogized his friend George’s poem rings with the
battle cry, with words like ‘soldiers’, ‘army’, ‘victory’, ‘foes’, ‘conflict’, ‘armor’,
‘battles’, and many more, perhaps amplified by what he and others could see
affecting their world, as well as what they thought lay ahead. Paul, the
Apostle, felt the battle went on, as did George Duffield who echoed his
departed friend’s final thoughts. We long for tranquility, but where would you
and I be without the call to arms?

See more
information on the song story in these sources: TheComplete Book of
Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J.
Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing
Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1990; 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1982; and Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s
Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

The minister
wanted to give his young charges a sense of the great task they were entering
that Monday, so he thought a marching song was appropriate. An army leapt to
Sabine Baring-Gould’s mind as he considered the poetry for “Onward Christian
Soldiers” in 1864. The images he paints are vivid and exciting, spurring mental
reminders from war pictures that stir one’s spirit. This was the period before
moving picture shows, so Baring-Gould must have been drawing upon other resources
to compose the lines that he says he dashed off rather hurriedly. His words
were meant to mold young children, but they still ring in the ears of adults…we
all must feel that conflict is still a reality, huh?

The
31-year-old minister Sabine Baring Gould was trying to inject some discipline,
some stability, into the children as he thought about the marching they’d be
doing, and perhaps it was something he wished had been a bit more true in his
own upbringing. His childhood found him travelling throughout Europe with his
family, though England was home, making his education by private tutors necessary.
His father’s and maternal grandfather’s military backgrounds must have provided
some of the foundation for “Onward…”, as Baring-Gould considered how his own
childhood experience might be translatable for the children he was teaching in
Horbury in northern England that day in the mid-19th Century. Banners
(v.1) whipping in the wind, soldiers in tight rows in lock-step, perhaps
singing a martial song in unison – these were memories perhaps from stories his
father and grandfather might have told, which stayed with Sabine. And so, when
gathering the children for Monday’s march to a nearby village, Sabine thought
for a while the previous evening about how he could get his classroom kids to
participate in the spirit of the occasion. He says he wrote hastily, and some three
decades later was still unconvinced its rhymes were adequate. But, perhaps the
aim of its inception was the hymn’s operative factor. Intended to teach and shape
its vocalists, “Onward Christian Soldiers” communicates not only the gravity of
the believer’s devotion, but the comradeship acquired in a group of followers,
too. After all, it’d be tough to fight all by oneself.

That companionship
is celebrated weekly in most believers’ lives. Sunday, resurrection, is no
small deal. It deserves a shout! But, I must admit that most of my marching by
Monday afternoon, and especially by the time I reach Friday, seems a little
weak-spirited by comparison. Think Sabine thought the same thing, or saw it in
the faces of those children? A song helps me remember – and it’s why I try to ‘scoop’
a helping of song each Friday or Saturday too. With this techno-age, I don’t
need to rely on my flawed memory. I can call other believer-friends, or send
them a text, or I can punch a disk into an electronic device to waft that marching
scent through my nose and ears once more. Play it again, Sam -- or rather,
Sabine!

See more
information on the song story in these sources: TheComplete Book of
Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J.
Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing
Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1990; 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1982; and Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s
Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.

Friday, January 1, 2016

He and his brother James were busily producing, editing, and
publishing songs in their Cincinnati publishing business, something that was in
their blood. Thus, a small product of this effort came very naturally to Fred
Fillmore one year very early in the new century. Although he and his family
evidently were not farmers, the words he wrote in “Sowing the Seed of the
Kingdom” speak of a different time, compared to ours a century later, when the
agrarian ways of perhaps many of his acquaintances was their lifestyle. And,
the same was also true of the era of the original composer, Palmer Hartsough,
who had joined the Fillmores in their Cincinnati business. Planting and growing
crops was familiar ground for early 20th Century American Christians,
who lived in an era and a nation where farms had multiplied by leaps and bounds.
So, the awareness of their surroundings by Fillmore and Hartsough, and how this
agrarian theme would resound in worshippers’ ears, is evident in the musical
questions they pose in a message about productivity in the eternal nation.

Frederick Augustus Fillmore and his brothers inherited and
carried on the musical life bred from their father. Augustus Fillmore had been
a preacher, hymnist, and publisher who moved his wife and seven children from
Illinois to Cincinnati where he set up a music business, the same one that Fred
and his brother James later continued after their father’s death. Another
brother Charles was likewise involved in editing the business’ monthly journal The Musical Messenger. Palmer Hartsough had joined the Fillmores’
effort by the late 19th Century upon moving to Cincinnati, and it
was probably soon thereafter that Fred became aware of Palmer’s first draft of “Sowing
the Seed…”. Hartsough had apparently crafted the words and music while still
living in Rock Island, Illinois in 1888, and then reworked it some more in 1896
after joining forces with the Fillmores. Still, it must have been less than
perfect, for Fred took hold of it by 1903 and revised it yet again. That Palmer, a notable writer with a few
hundred hymns to his credit, would apparently permit Fred to edit his work
suggests Fred had insight for sowing that Palmer had not acquired. Did Fred use
other words that would speak more clearly to the anticipated audience? Perhaps
it was the musical form that Fred chose to improve. Whatever the cause, 47-year
old Fred’s effort evidently satisfied his partner Palmer, since the song survives
113 years later as Fred crafted it. It started out in Illinois, made its way to
southwestern Ohio, and has travelled many other places since then, and to more
than just farmers.

It’s a few simple thoughts about planting seed at all times
of the day and in an area where the kernels can prosper. The words of Palmer
and Fillmore plainly coax the worshipper to consider the long-term outlook, for
what would there be at the end if the farmer doesn’t plant? What would I be
able to eat if some farmer didn’t plan and carry out his life’s work? They must
have been trying to reach an agrarian crowd, we can say about the composers,
but the terrain of this hymn is not foreign if instead I sit behind a desk all
day or at this computer. We all produce for more than just ourselves. Is what I’m
planting feeding others well?